This week, sign ups went out for Winter enrichment classes: crunch time to see if there is enough interest for the club to launch. I only need 7 students to sign up, but there's a lot of competition for students' attention.

In Scott Almes’ The Last Lighthouse, an 18-card solo game from Button Shy, players defend a lonely beacon against encroaching nightmares. This review explores how a minimalist design captures the tension, isolation, and fragile sanity of lighthouse keeping.

A scope and sequence for the first few weeks of the club, including weekly topics, discussion and reflection prompts, and some ideas for games.

Paper App Dungeon is a charming pencil-and-paper roguelike solitaire game that hits some nostalgia but stumbles on gameplay depth and rules clarity. Clever concept, clear execution on theme, but its mechanics feel less than deliberate.

Although I told myself that I wasn’t going to put too much on my plate my first year in a new gig, I am going to start up an after-school board game club. I will use this blog to continue to share the progress of Level-Up Board Game Club, and some thoughts and practices on teaching games to younger gamers. Hopefully this will be a useful resource if you are trying to get something like this started at your school.